You may not realize how much traffic your website may be missing out on if you are not currently posting ads on websites which provide free classified listings.  There are many websites that provide free classified listings (e.g. www.FreeClassifiedListings.com ) and help your business in many ways that you may not be aware.
 

1. Many of the websites which provide free classified listings also provide quick and easy ways to manage your advertisements online within the member control panel. 
2. Although these ads are usually FREE, the incredibly powerful reporting and managing tools provided (not to mention the low price tag)  allows you to have an ad online visible to the world in a matter of minutes.
3. Many of the classified sites publish RSS (Real Simple Syndication) streams allowing other online publications to relay up-to-the-minute content (meaning the content is managed in a central location, allowing changes to be reflected across many sites at the same time) 
4. Whether you manage an eBay account or a multinational corporate web presence, classified ads provide an incredibly quick way for you to get an additional boost in advertising exposure.
5. All advertising can help a business, and yes, you will get direct links to your site from the ads you post online however the number one reason to use classified directories online comes from the natural reciprocal linking.

Reciprocal Linking  is “The process of exchanging links with other websites... Since both participating websites get an inbound link, it helps in building link popularity.”

To take advantage of the phenomenon known as ‘reciprocal linking’ all you need to do is simply post your ad with a link to your website, then ad a link on your site that links back to your classified ad.  That’s it.

In order to understand how classified listings help your website generate more visitors (both directly and indirectly) you need to understand the importance of reciprocal linking to search engines ranking and how classified directory are designed by default to excel in this department.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. “In computing, a directory, catalog, or folder, is an entity in a file system which contains a group of files and other directories. A typical file system contains thousands of files, and directories help organize them by keeping related files together. A directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory of that directory. Together, the directories form a hierarchy, or tree structure.“ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory

So now you are asking yourself, how does this help your business attract more visitors?  The answer to this is simple.  Those same search engines you want to gain popularity with regard these ‘classified ads’ as gold.  Why? It’s simple.  These links are already classified into targeted categories.  The vary nature of a classifieds directory is to categorize the myriad of information into a logical and searchable form. Sounds familiar?

Many search engines place this one factor (reciprocal linking) above all others as a way to measure the popularity of a website. In theory, the search engines cross references the target site and checks to see how many links are listed within their database which point back to the target site.  Using this logic, the more popular a website is, the search engine assumes that the site must contain more relevant web content; therefore it receives a higher search engine ranking.

Now, before you go and start cross linking all your websites together, you should also note that the quality of the link is of utmost importance.

The benefit of placing free classified ads online is that when posted in the appropriate categories, they are "PERFECT" reciprocal links.  They produce highly targeted links back to relevant content.  They are pre-categorized and are publicly maintained.

This is very important when attempting to increase your website placement within search engine results.

Paul Johnston is a freelance writer for http://www.seogurus.net and also created and maintain the free advertising directory http://www.FreeClassifiedListings.com which was launched with the specific goal to provide both individuals and businesses an alternative advertising service allowing everyone to 'Have your voice heard!'.

January 19 2007